This was the last song of Unite 2009, Marvelous Light by Charlie Hall. It was such a great night all around. Also, it was my birthday, so Jeff had everyone sing me happy birthday.

Marvelous Light, Unite 2009 from Dustin Petersen on Vimeo.

It was such a cool night to be a part of. I’ll talk more about it in the next day or so.

d

Two weeks ago, I started a Bible reading plan right now that takes you through the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation, in 90 days. It’s ambitious to say the least. Anyway, I was in Numbers and came across a cool thing I wanted to share.

In the story of Balaam, which most people familiar with the story know it because of his talking donkey, there was a really cool verse that I came upon during his blessings over Israel. Numbers 23:21 says:

“No misfortune is seen in Jacob,
no misery observed in Israel.
The LORD their God is with them;
the shout of the King is among them.

The shout of the King is among them. That’s an awesome line to put into a song (dibs!). But it’s also more than that. What is the “shout of the King”? My guess, and feel to correct me if I’m way off base here, is that the shout of the King is the worship of the people. Through songs, feasts, celebrations, and offerings, the people worshiped God, and they worshiped him LOUD. It was the shout of the King, not the whisper, not the hum, but the shout of the King that was among Israel.

When we join together and unite our voices in praise, the shout of the King is among us. When a people are united, their enemies scatter. When the Body of Christ is united in praise, our enemies scatter.

Let hope rise,
And darkness tremble
In Your holy light,
And every eye will see
Jesus, our God,
Great and mighty to be praised. – With Everything, Hillsong

Amen.

d

Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee – Passion version
Hosanna – Brooke Ligertwood (Hillsong United)
Father Let Me Dedicate – Passion version
Take My Life – Traditional/Tomlin (Passion version)

This Sunday was quite different as there was a lot of talking about ministry opportunities throughout the church and ways to get involved. There were also videos and interviews of people that show how God can take simple ideas and turn them into reality. Next week, it’s back to youth group as we kick off the new school year with our “move up” Sunday.

It’ll be good.

d

part of Sunday Setlists at FredMcKinnon.com

Over the last few days, I’ve been working pretty diligently on crafting a song that I’ve had floating in my head for a while now. I found a neat program called Guitar Pro that lets you write the music, and then it’ll actually play it back for you so you can see how it sounds. (See how is sounds? Whatever.) It’s great for writing down multiple tracks and then listening to them all together without spending a lot of time in GarageBand recording and editing them to fit over each other.

I used this program in the past during high school in my wanna-be-metallica-style-show-how-good-we-are band and liked it a lot. I found it again and decided to try it out again, this time on a Mac, and I now remember why I liked it so much. It makes writing so much easier, and you can get a much, much better feel for how everything sounds together. It also fuels musical creativity since you have a lot of control over arrangements and styles that you wouldn’t normally try. You can even write drum tracks in it. One of the fun things I’ve also been able to do is find some old tracks of my high school band that we wrote on Guitar Pro and listen to them again. They were really awesome, in a really lame sort of way.

What fuels your creativity?

d

d

The new Hillsong live album, Faith+Hope+Love, came out today, (or last night for those in Alaska) and I felt that it might be a good thing to chime in with some of my initial thoughts on the album, having listened to it all the way through.

It’s also a slow day as far as ideas go to keep up with NaBloPoMo.

There’s a lot of high expectations around this album from the guys down under. After the awesome-epicness that was This is Our God.

I think that off the bat, my favorite song on the CD is I Will Exalt You. Brooke Fraser sings it (that’s enough of a reason right there) and it has a beautiful and simple feel to it that build intensity but never reaches a full on anthem sound like Hillsong does so well.

I also really, really like You Hold Me Now at the end of the CD. This song is also on the United CD that came out this year, but the combined placement and arrangement of the song on this album made for a truly awesome time of worship. There’s also the time at the end singing a part of the Lord’s prayer, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

The one little thing about this album that you’ll notice in contrast to the last few live albums if the flow of songs. This album was recorded on separate nights as opposed to one night like previous albums. This leads to a few spots where it abruptly changes and goes to the next song. Other than that though, I really like this album.

This is the 18th live worship album that Hillsong has done and it doesn’t show signs of stopping soon. Their songwriters continue to write incredible songs that people across the earth can worship to. This CD, like most, will get better the more it’s listened to and I’m excited for the new songs to sing to our Lord.

Go buy this album.

d

Yesterday was a sad night. It was a good night, but it was also sad. It was the last youth group for our seniors who graduated this year, and thus it was the last time that the team that I’ve been blessed to lead for the last fourteen months got to play together as two of the team members graduated this year. For our setlist, we talked as a team about which songs over the past year have been our favorites to do and which ones felt like they had the most impact. We talked and decided that our set would be:

The Time Has Come – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
Marvelous Light – Charlie Hall
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us – Stuart Townend
From the Inside Out – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)

Yes, The Time Has Come is a pretty new song, but it’s one that we’ve really taken a liking to. It was also good to play it again this week as it got a little more ingrained in the memories of everyone. Like I’ve mentioned before, Marvelous Light has gained a lot of momentum in the months that it’s been a part of our list of songs. I still think that this song has the best pre chorus ever in saying, “Sin has lost its power. Death has lost its sting. From the gave You’ve risen victoriously.”

As a team, we’ve only done How Deep the Father’s Love for Us once, and that was when we led all three church services back in May. But it was a song that we liked, and it’s a great song to take a deep breath and just rest in the words of the song. We did it in a way that allowed a seamless transition into From the Inside Out, and Inside Out is a song that our team could play with our eyes closed and no preparation we’ve done it so many times. It’s definitely one of the top songs in our youth group and pretty much has been since introduced almost two years ago.

I’ve been amazingly blessed to lead this team and am very thankful for the time we’ve had to play and worship together. I pray that God will do big and mighty things in the lives of our seniors as they head off to college in the next few weeks.

The first youth group of the new school year is in two weeks and we’ll be in the process of raising up younger musicians to be a part of the team.

I’m excited to see what’s to come for this team.

d

I’m exhausted. Today was a serious “bring it” day at our youth group gatherings tonight. We had a very high tempo, high intensity set along with the same setup we had last week with two electric guitars instead of one electric and one acoustic. Our setlist tonight looked like this:

The Time Has Come – Joel Houston (Hillsong United)
All Day – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
Tell the World – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
(detecting a pattern here?)
Hosanna – Brooke Fraser (Hillsong United)

Like I said: high tempo, high intensity. This was the first time our band has done The Time Has Come at youth group, we practiced it a little bit last summer but we never played it during a set. This song was a song that was done at CHIC, so students knew it pretty well already, which is always nice when you have a new song and half of the people already know it. It was awesome, for our first real time playing it together, the team did a really good job with it.

Yes, we did All Day last week. But we did it again this week to get it lodged in the heads of everyone a little bit that way it’s familiar when we play it in the future. I love this song. It’s simple, it’s real easy to follow, it’s loud.

Tell the World was also a new song for us. We don’t normally do two new songs in one week, but with most people already knowing The Time Has Come, I think it was okay to introduce this one, too. Again, the team did a great job with this song.

I was super excited to do Hosanna, because Krista was going to lead it, and she did an absolutely awesome job with it! It’s awesome to have a female singer on the team, it opens up new songs and arrangements and I think it benefits everyone. The organ pad that Jordan played really added some great texture to this song as it carried it through the verses the way an acoustic guitar normally would. Also, Jonathan played a sick bass riff during the verse that was way cool.

There it is, a seemingly short Sunday Setlist compared to the marathon day that was last week. It was a great Sunday, and I’m very blessed to be able to do what I do here.

d

From all I’ve heard and seen from it, it looks like CHIC was an amazing week and God moved mightily there. Next CHIC is in 2012 and I’d love to go to that one as a leader.

d

Another Sunday Setlist post recapping the worship set this Sunday at Church. The hub for all of things Sunday Setlist can be found over at FredMcKinnon.com.

Today was an epic and epically long Sunday for me. I played acoustic guitar and co-led the 5:00 service with Autumn and then led worship for both of our youth groups.

The 5:00 service was just me on guitar and Autumn on piano. It was really neat for me to play and lead a set with Autumn, just the two of us, because of how she’s really the one who has taught me just about everything about what it means and what it looks like to lead worship. Our set looked like this:

It Is You – Newsboys
Unchanging – Chris Tomlin
Everlasting God – Brenton Brown
//dismiss kids – greeting//
Desert Song – Brooke Fraser (Hillsong)
//sermon//
It Is Well – Traditional
Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus – Traditional
//offering//
Oh You Bring – Matt Crocker (Hillsong United)
You Never Let Go – Matt Redman

We each led four songs, Autumn led three of the four before the sermon, and I led three of the four after the sermon. The time after the sermon was really, really powerful. It was this recognition that no matter what is going or has gone on in our lives, God is still God. It was a really cool moment and the presence of God was right there with us.

Oh You Bring was a new song for us. It was the first time for us playing it in a service and despite it only being the two of us, the arrangement and instrumentation we did on it made it work. All in all it was a great service, and it was really cool to do a simple arrangement, vocal and harmony rich set with the person who taught me basically everything I know.

After the service, however, the day was just getting started. There were still two sets to play for our junior and senior high youth groups. We did a different setup at youth group tonight. We switched to two electrics instead of one acoustic and one electric, we had a female singer on stage with us (who did a great job!), and then had our keys, bass, and drums. Our sets for youth group was as follows:

Dancing Generation – Matt Redman
All Day – Marty Sampson (Hillsong United)
Mighty to Save – Reuben Morgan and Ben Fielding (Hillsong)
Overcome – Jon Egan (Desperation Band)

Our team did a great job with these songs. Dancing Generation and All Day were fun and loud. Mighty to Save and Overcome were powerful and worshipful.

It was a great Sunday. However, it was a long, long day. Between practices, sound checks, and actual services, I was at the church from 1:30 to 9:00. I don’t regret any part of the day, but I can’t do this every Sunday.

But today was oh so totally worth it.

d